[ Léigh as GaeilgeOpens in new window ]
There’s a scene in the movie Kneecap, the semi-fictionalised origin story of the Irish-speaking rap band from Belfast, when Móglaí Bap’s father tells him, “You speak Irish, but you don’t understand the language.”
The father, played by Michael Fassbender, is an unreconstructed IRA man, an Irish speaker who repeatedly told his son when he was young that “every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom”.
The importance of the language to him culturally and politically is obvious. His son is living a feckless existence as a low-level drug dealer, with a nihilistic outlook on life. What the father is blind to is that Irish can have a meaning and relevance outside the narrow confines of his own worldview.
The band’s splenetic songs are delivered like bullets, but for a different kind of freedom: “Sula bhfágaim an leaba, spliff agus cupán tae” – or “Before I leave the bed, a spliff and a cup of tea” – rattles out Móglaí Bap’s bandmate Mo Chara.
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Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí would have been blown away by the film. It contains everything he championed, and campaigned for, over his 30-year career as a brilliant broadcaster, music fanatic, big-ideas person, political activist and all-round Gaeilge revolutionary.
Mac Aodha Bhuí, more than anybody else, helped drag the Irish language into the 21st century. The Gweedore broadcaster was a Gaeltacht person through and through, with a huge respect for the traditions and culture that went with the language. But he also had fire-in-the-belly enthusiasm for modern music and for modern life and for youth culture.
With his glasses, loose shirts and slightly unfashionable hair, he had the appearance of an engineering student at University College Galway in the 1990s. But he was a renegade at heart. His signature sign-off was one of rebellion: raising his fist in the air and bellowing “Dorn san aer do na Gaeil!” (“A raised fist for the Gaels!”)
His death last autumn, at the age of 53, after a four-year struggle with cancer, came as a huge blow to Gaeltacht and Irish-speaking communities everywhere.
To commemorate this unique broadcaster, a music festival is being held in Gweedore, in Co Donegal, this weekend. Its eclectic mix of acts, which includes the Belfast reggae band Bréag, the 1980s rock band Na Fíréin, John Spillane, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin and Róisín Chambers, reflects Mac Aodha Bhuí's wide interests. It is being opened by the veteran republican Bernadette McAliskey. The name of the festival is, aptly, Dorn San Aer.
Mac Aodha Bhuí was born in 1970, the youngest of a large family who came to settle in the Gweedore Gaeltacht. Even as a young boy he was fascinated with music. “For me it started with Clannad and Sara Brae in the 1970s,” he once said, “the way they put a modern slant on traditional songs from Donegal.”
He moved to Dublin in his late teens to study and landed his first job as the Irish-language newsreader with the now defunct Century Radio. He went on to work at RTÉ, where he and Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh were reporters for an Irish-language entertainment show, Scaoil Amach an Bobailín. Ní Chofaigh would remain a lifelong friend. “Even then he had a big personality,” she says. “Always. He loved socialising and the craic and going out. It was a bit bonkers.
“He was political even then, and also curious about the world. He’d go back to the flat he shared with people in Ranelagh and he’d have somebody in tow who he met on the streets. He would come in and say, ‘Here’s a man from Peru who I met just now. He has told me all about his country and all the injustices that are happening there.’
“I can remember him being absorbed by Maggie O’Kane’s reporting from Bosnia and him advocating the Palestinian cause long before there was widespread support for it.”
Mac Aodha Bhuí and Ní Chofaigh loved the social side of Dublin, but there was an absence. “There was nowhere to go where Irish was spoken that you could enjoy yourself, speak Irish and listen to music. Ronán liked craic, but he wanted craic in Irish.”
Together they set up An Ciorcal Craiceáilte, a night out with bands and DJs, with the USP that everything happened in Irish. An Ciorcal became hugely popular very quickly and began touring to other cities. Later, when he moved back to Donegal, Mac Aodha Bhuí set up the monthly Cabaret Craiceáilte, showcasing up-and-coming musical talent.
There is nothing to match the feeling when there’s a group of Gaels together singing and dancing and showing our love for one another
— Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí lays out his philosophy
An Ciorcal Craiceáilte was the progenitor of the pop-up Gaeltachts, the Irish-language part of Electric Picnic, and the G-Spota in Belfast. Mac Aodha Bhuí was a central figure in what he described as this revolution.
In Donegal he came into his own on air, hosting the RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta afternoon show Rónán Beo. He was in his element among crowds of Irish speakers. The annual Oireachtas na Gaeilge festival was his All Ireland, where his freewheeling and slightly anarchic style came into its own. He broadcast live from the auditorium, his stream of consciousness delivered at an incendiary pace.
As he described his own experience of the Oireachtas, “We are Irish and are sincere about keeping our language and culture alive, but we also like the pleasures of life. We like to celebrate our Gaelic identity as often as possible. There is nothing to match the feeling when there’s a group of Gaels together singing and dancing and showing our love for one another.”
All the time Mac Aodha Bhuí was a one-man scouting operation for Irish-speaking talent. Young musicians recall being called out of the classrooms by teachers to be told that he was on the line, wanting them to be put on the show.
One of those young bands was Kneecap. He was the first to discover them and to broadcast them, on Raidió na Gaeltachta in 2018, with plenty of bleeps inserted. He interviewed Naoise Ó Cairealláin and Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh – Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara – that day, with most of the conversation focusing on drugs and music.
Indeed, the recording of that programme illustrates the magically madcap nature of the programme. Mac Aodha Bhuí was ingesting (legal) cannabis oil on air. (“Ni fhaigheann tú aon buzz uaidh,” he said – “You don’t get any buzz from it.”) The prize for that day’s quiz was a trailerload of turf. (“Coinneoidh sé te thú le linn an Fhómhair,” or, “It will keep you warm during the autumn.”) And then there is that extraordinary rap song as Gaeilge.
In an interview he gave on the Ceangal G YouTube channel in 2015, Mac Aodha Bhuí more or less set out his manifesto.
An Ciorcal and Cabaret Craiceálte “provided a stage for young Irish musicians”, he said, “with an emphasis on modern music – rock, reggae, ska and rap – but also traditional music and sean-nós. My main goal in 1993 was that there would be a strong music industry in the Irish language, that new groups would emerge to compose new music, make new albums and have a place to perform. I wanted a revolution in Irish music, younger and bolder in its approach. I wanted a new table, a new music agency, an academy to inspire the emerging generation to use Irish in their music ... It lifts my spirit to see so many new musicians and music as part of this revolution.”
His cancer diagnosis in 2019 led to an ordeal that included multiple bouts of exhausting chemotherapy. As his condition deteriorated, musicians from all over Ireland gathered at Whelan’s, the Dublin venue, for a concert to raise money for radical treatment in the United States. Watching the gig from Denver, he saw friends such as Kíla, Síle Denvir and Barry Kerr, Colm Mac an Iomaire and The Mary Wallopers play for him.
He died at home on September 19th, 2023, with his wife, Bernie, and daughter, Fionnuala, by his side. “They were selfless during his illness and looked after him so well,” says Ní Chofaigh.
When you ask her about his legacy, she replies simply: “Dorn san Aer.”
“It was not propaganda. He believed it. He changed the culture. His influence is to be seen everywhere – in the pop-up Gaeltachts, in Irish-language programming, in the music. Anybody who encountered him was inspired. Kneecap dedicated their first album to him last year. If you look at the credits of the film, there is a picture of Rónan and JJ” – JJ Ó Dochartaigh, aka DJ Próvaí – “embracing each other.”
[ First Encounters: Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh and Rónán Mac Aodha BhuíOpens in new window ]
In the Ceangal G interview, Mac Aodha Bhuí talked about the change in Irish-language culture and music that he had initiated. “We can’t be stopped now. We go onwards on the road to revolution.”
He raised his fist in the air, looked at the camera and declared, “Dorn san aer do na Gaeil.”
Dorn San Aer takes places in Gweedore, Co Donegal, Friday-Sunday, September 27th-29th
